The plan for what happens when a key person suddenly can't work, illness, an emergency, an unplanned departure, usually exists only as a vague assumption that someone would figure it out. That assumption gets tested for real during an actual crisis, which is the worst possible time to discover it doesn't actually work.
A fire drill isn't about assuming disaster. It's finding the real gaps in coverage while there's still time to fix them calmly.
The plan for coverage only gets genuinely tested during a real emergency
A coverage plan that's never actually tested is a hypothesis, not a plan, and the first real test tends to happen during an actual crisis, exactly when there's no room left to discover it doesn't work. Test it deliberately, before you need it.
Pick one real person and actually run the scenario, not a theoretical discussion
Pick a specific, real key person and genuinely walk through what would happen if they were suddenly unavailable tomorrow, not an abstract discussion about coverage in general. Specificity is what surfaces the real gaps.
In Stelaah, a client's full history and context stay on the record rather than in one person's head, reducing how much genuinely disappears if that person is suddenly unavailable. See how clients works.
Find out specifically what only lives in that person's head, not documented anywhere
Every key person holds some genuinely undocumented knowledge, a client's real preferences, an unwritten process detail, that would be lost if they were suddenly gone. The drill's real purpose is finding exactly what that is, before it's actually lost.
Test whether a specific someone else can actually step in, not just assume they could
Naming a backup on paper isn't the same as confirming that person could genuinely step in with what's currently documented and available. Actually test it, have them try to answer a real question using only what's written down.
Fix the real gaps it surfaces, not just note them and move on
A fire drill that identifies real gaps and then does nothing about them provides false confidence rather than real protection. Treat what it surfaces as an actual to-do list, not just an interesting exercise.
A simple checklist
If you do nothing else, do these five things:
- Pick a specific real person and run the actual scenario.
- Find out what genuinely only lives in that person's head.
- Actually test whether a named backup could really step in.
- Fix the real gaps it surfaces, don't just note them.
- Run it before an emergency, not as a response to one.
Do that, and coverage for a key person becomes a tested plan, not an untested assumption that only gets discovered during an actual crisis.
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